Megan Erickson’s article on techo-fixes for education (“Edutopia“) in the March issue of Jacobin is an excellent critique of corporate-driven education “reform” efforts like those of the Gates Foundation and IDEO. As a critique of attempts to build an alternative educational model around decentralizing technology in general, it’s… not so excellent. The immediate object of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “The Poverty of the Welfare State [PDF]” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Joe Peacott, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. As the government, at various levels, attempts to cut back on welfare and other entitlement payments to poor people and/or require people to work in exchange for their welfare…

In the 1997 Simpsons episode “Homer’s Enemy” viewers meet Frank Grimes, a man who has never caught a break. He has had to work hard, if not outright struggle, for everything he has in life. Grimes is hired to work at the nuclear power plant alongside Homer Simpson, who is very much the opposite of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Ricketson‘s “A Left-Libertarianism I Don’t Recognize” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. In fact, what left-libertarianism has as its central tenet is that every individual should have complete control over their life and no one else’s. Misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and the myriad other bigotries that can haunt the…

“You call yourself free? Your dominant thought I want to hear, and not that you have escaped from a yoke. Are you one of those who had the right to escape from a yoke? There are some who threw away their last value when they threw away their servitude. Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathustra! But…

This election cycle’s crop of uninspiring presidential hopefuls, now including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, must be a relief to those favoring mass disillusionment with electoral politics. No candidate, Rand Paul included, represents a convincing alternative to the status quo. Contrast this with the current president, whose appeals to “hope” and “change” convinced many Americans of…

Murray Bookchin. The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies & the Promise of Direct Democracy. Foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin (New York and London: Verso, 2015). This book is a collection of Bookchin’s essays on libertarian municipalism and communalism, extending from the period when he still considered himself an anarchist until his final post-anarchist phase. In…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Roderick Long, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. “Lodge practice” refers to an arrangement, reminiscent of today’s HMOs, whereby a particular society or lodge would contract with a doctor to provide medical care to its members. The…

I keep resolving not to comment on any more of Alternet‘s by-the-numbers anti-libertarian puff pieces, but a recent one from David Masciotra (“You’re Not the Boss of Me: Why Libertarianism is a Childish Sham,” February 26) is in its own category of wretchedness. Masciotra’s commentary includes two seemingly contradictory lines of argument. In the first,…

Oggi un individualista in politica rischia di farsi una nomea. Non c’è da sorprendersi. Dopotutto la politica è dominata da politici eletti, e la politica elettorale va essenzialmente contro l’individuo. In un libero mercato o in un’associazione volontaria di qualsiasi genere, le persone in disaccordo sarebbero libere di andare da qualche altra parte. Le elezioni…

Various. Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader (AK Press/Dark Star 2002) The people involved with Dark Star Collective sought to provide an introductory anthology to the ideas of anarcha-feminism after numerous visitors to their bookstand wondered if they had anything on the subject. Anarcha-feminism is the radical synthesis of feminism and anarchism, or the idea that destroying…

It is difficult to take a political work seriously with the word “nanny” in the title, but Dean Baker’s 2006 book the “Conservative Nanny State” is a serious book and a decent introduction to some often overlooked market distortions that benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else. It also has the advantage of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Ricketson‘s “Radicalism as Revolution: A Call for a Fractal Libertarianism” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. Ruper, in all fairness, does say he appreciates libertarians’ intense self-analysis. He seems to just want libertarians to redirect their energies toward spreading broadly libertarian ideas, rather than converting members of the libertarian movement…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Charles Johnson‘s “Against All Nations and Borders” read by Ryan Calhoun and edited by Nick Ford. A recent post at the “Libertarian Realist” blog (actually, they are neither) claims to take issue with Sheldon Richman’s defense of free immigration. The post is an example of astonishing sophistry, beginning with a long attack on Sheldon’s…

Objectivist scholar Chris Sciabarra, in his brilliant book Total Freedom, called for a “dialectical libertarianism.” By dialectical analysis, Sciabarra means to “grasp the nature of a part by viewing it systemically — that is, as an extension of the system within which it is embedded.” Individual parts receive their character from the whole of which…

With all the hub-bub surrounding the International Students for Liberty Conference, Ron Paul, and “second-wave libertarianism,” I am reminded of a passage in Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity about the “sub-man.” This is quite reflective of any of us who deal with ideologies, but those who specifically follow libertarianism and or anarchism may want…

Geçen Kasım, Birleşmiş Milletler Yüksek İltica Komisyonu (UNHCR) “devletsizlik sorununu” bitirmek için 10 yıllık programı başlattı. Aralıkta, UNHCR Devletsizlikte Bölgesel Koruma Kıdemli Memuru, Emmanuelle Mitte, gazetecilere (Batı Afrikada ve dünya çapında) programı desteklemeleri için temyiz etti ve basının “savunma ve konu sensitizasyon sorumluluğu” anıldı. Ancak bu kampanya, “Ben Aitim” ismiyle, destekci ve yaraticiların Birleşmiş Milletler, siyasi hükümetler, ve yöneten…

A new pamphlet featuring two classic short essays is now available for download thanks to the efforts of the Tulsa Alliance of the Libertarian Left — [PDF] Anarchism Without Hyphens & The Left/Right Spectrum (by Karl Hess). Please note that the format of the PDF file features a staggered page order layout intended to facilitate printing…

These three short stories all come from the same Cory Doctorow collection, Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007). Free download here. The three are all set against a background of what I call the “DRM Curtain,” a transnational corporate Empire based on artificial scarcities enforced through a maximalist version “intellectual…

Two weeks ago we all learned that Brad Spangler, a professed libertarian and anarchist once of some prominence, is a child molester. There have always been hidden monsters and no movement, community or culture is entirely immune. But while we’ve spent the last two weeks recoiling in horror and crushed under the sadness of these…